Chuck vs The Magnarune
by Stephen Tannhauser
Summary: In another world where magic has become a science and technology of its own, a flunked-out journeyman sorcerer in a dead-end job with no prospects and no hope accidentally winds up the inheritor of a power that could change the fate of humanity . . . .
1. Chapter 1

CHUCK VS. THE MAGNARUNE

By Stephen Tannhauser

 **Description:** In another world where magic has become a science and technology of its own, a flunked-out journeyman sorcerer in a dead-end job with no prospects and no hope accidentally winds up the inheritor of a power that could change the fate of humanity . . . .

 **Notes:** The primary influence on the world being built here was Harry Turtledove's obscure but absolutely brilliant fantasy novel _The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump_ (1993). Jim Butcher's _Cinder Spires_ and _Codex Alera_ series are also worth acknowledging.

 **Disclaimer:** CHUCK and all associated characters and images are owned by NBC, Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak. The dialogue and plot of this story is largely adapted from the pilot episode "Chuck vs. the Intersect" by Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak. No ownership of these elements is claimed by the author.

\- 1 -

"Morgan, this is a bad idea," Chuck muttered, tapping his light on and off in nervous reflex.

"Well, we can't stay here, Chuck," Morgan growled, yanking on his gloves. In the sporadically-lit darkness, he was a dim shape near the window as he fiddled with his crafter's belt. "Don't wisp out on me now, pal. Stick to the plan." He twisted the locks open and shoved the windowpanes back.

"I'm uncomfortable with the plan!"

Morgan took the bedsheet he'd knotted into a rope and threw one end out the window. "Are you comfortable with survival?!"

" _Ignis_ ," said a clear female voice. The lamps around the room flared to life—there was still enough oil in them for hours—and illuminated the chamber: a small, white-plastered room dominated by a bed in the centre, walls covered with prints for obscure Hollygrove glams, a crafter's table cluttered with thaumaturgical tools, reagents and leftover crystals, and at the door, a tall brunette whose slim fingers rested against the silver-inked trigger rune on the wall. Caught, frozen, the dark-haired gawky man hunched down by the bed stared at her, while the shorter bearded man balancing on the windowsill windmilled his arms desperately and fell out of sight into the darkness.

"Morgan?" said the woman disbelievingly.

"We've been compromised!" came a yell from outside. "I'm a ghost!"

Chuck closed his eyes. "Morgan, don't leave me like this . . . you can't _do_ this to me, man!"

The woman folded her arms, drawing her blue gown and white Healer's sash snugly against her body and revealing that for all her slender height she didn't lack for curves. Her glare, however, would have shut down most men daring to appreciate it. "Chuck," she said, in a tone that indicated she was already quite sure of the answer, "what are you doing?"

"Um, escaping?" Chuck admitted.

"From your own name-day party?"

Outside the windowsill, Morgan's head popped up again; he waved at the woman with a sheepish grin, clinging to the knotted sheet with his other hand. "Hey, Ellie. Wow, you look fantastic."

Ellie ignored Morgan, only gazing steadily at Chuck, who sank back onto the floor. "Well, you see, sis, the thing is, Morgan and I don't really feel like we're, well, fitting in at . . . _my_ name-day party. You see, we don't know any of these people, because they're all _your_ friends and almost all of them are either Healers, or nurses, or lay Order members."

"And none of 'em really get our jokes," Morgan chimed in.

"Well, _your_ jokes," said Chuck.

"Okay, my jokes."

"Chuck." Ellie's glare at her brother didn't relent a smidgen. "I have invited real girls to our home for you to meet. Not glamours, not aetherling constructs, but actual, live, red-blooded human women. I have even managed to talk you up to the point where some of them think you might be a viable courting interest. If you disappoint me in this it'll make me look unreliable to my hospital's Preceptor. And I have put up with _you_ moping around this house long enough. So come on." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder to the door. "Let's go. Morgan, you stay here."

Chuck sighed and got to his feet, brushing down his blue MyLore tunic and breeches. He glanced back at his friend, still hanging off the windowsill. "Need a hand, buddy?"

Morgan let go of the knotted sheet and stood up, glancing down at the ground to make sure his boots hadn't landed in a flowerbed. "No, no, I'm okay, I'm all right."

ECHO PARK ESTATE, CASTILLO DES ANGELES, PROVINCE OF CALIFORNIA

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2007 A.D., 8:42 P.M. PST

The Echo Park estate was a fairly typical example of Iberian-colonial architecture: a nineteenth-century _hidalgo_ 's manse built around an open courtyard dominated by a large white marble fountain, which made a great venue for carouses while still allowing chaperones to watch from second-floor windows. The chaperones had fallen out of fashion (a state of affairs the Church still bemoaned), and the manse had been broken up into individual apartments, but the courtyard's role remained. Ellie steered her brother through their apartment and out into the crowd of young, good-looking, and by now most likely more than a little intoxicated people, muttering constant encouragement. "Hokeh, nameday boy, come with me, we're going to be _social_ , you are funny, you're smart, you're handsome . . . ."

"Thank you," Chuck muttered. "Oh, look, there's Captain Awesome . . . ."

" _Please_ don't call him that."

Ellie's _bonamour_ Devon, whom Chuck could have forgiven his tall blond gorgeousness and physical prowess if he hadn't also been infuriatingly goodhearted, smart and friendly _and_ a world-class Healer, clapped Chuck on the shoulders and took over steering him. "Hokeh, I've identified some courting candidates for Chuck and they—are— _awesome_ ," he declared. With a brisk shove he pushed Chuck up to a small group of girls, standing by the fountain with drinks in hand. "Girls, let me introduce you to Chuck, Lady Eleanor's brother!"

Chuck smiled feebly around at the girls as they enthusiastically greeted him, all in the latest sequined carouse-fashions. "Are you in a costume?" one asked him curiously, looking at his work tunic.

"No, no, I'm, uh, I'm an associate journeyman at the MyLore in Burbank." That was a polite way of saying you hadn't qualified for a Guild chapter membership, but a lot of the big charter outlets would cheerfully overlook that flaw for people with enough magecraft, especially out here on the West Coast. "I'm with the Rune Goons."

"'Rune Goons'? That is so cute. What do you really want to do?"

"Working on a five-year plan, just trying to pick the right calligraphy . . . ." Chuck fumbled his way through various sprite-chatter questions, feeling sweat break under his arms. He had never liked this part of courting. He and Jill had never needed it. "No, uh, I'm not injured, it's from the glame _High King's Duty_ —the rune panel chafes after a while . . . ."

"So Ellie said you went to Stanford?" said a blue-eyed redhead whose name he hadn't caught.

Oh, Christ. Of _course_ Ellie would have mentioned that. "Yes, that's . . . technically correct. I majored in arcanology."

"Oh, my God, I graduated in '02! I knew this great guy who went to Stanford; he majored in arcanology too, and he ran track and I think he did gymnastics as well, what was his name?—"

 _Hell. I'm in Hell._ "Bryce Larkin," Chuck muttered. "He was my dormmate. I think he went on to become a ledger-scribe."

Thankfully, the redhead's scatterwit attention didn't seem inclined to stay with the topic of Bryce. "Do you have a _bonamour_?"

Not that that topic was much better. "Not now; I did, back at Stanford. Her name was Jill; we met in freshman year . . . ." He found himself staring at the air, lost in memory. "I remember when we met, it was in economics class . . . I was walking across the quad, and she'd dropped her bag, and I was like, you know, rushing to go pick it up for her, and we did that whole like, you know, in the funnyglams, bumping heads at once, and there was a whole gang of us . . . Jill, and me, and Bryce . . . ." He sighed. "We all had so much in common then . . . ."

The rest of the story poured out of him, now entirely possessed of its own momentum, as if an aetherling had taken him over: the accusation of cheating, the hearing, the discovery of the examination questions in his room, Bryce's betrayal, discovering Jill in Bryce's room, the leaden words forever terminating his hope of becoming a Fellowship Scholar . . . . "So there I was," he finished, staring numbly at the pavement. "Jill with Bryce, me on a train home—I guess she thought he was more exciting; hard to blame her . . . ."

Chuck trailed off, looked around, and blinked. He was alone. With a sigh, Devon walked up to him and put a reproving hand on his shoulder. "Not awesome, bro," he said mournfully. "Not awesome."

"Yeah," Chuck muttered. "Yeah, I kinda got that."

WASHINGTON, ENCLAVE OF ST. COLUMBA, DIRECTORATE OF VICEREGAL INTELLIGENCE

LABORATORY ALPHA CHI 22

11:57 P.M. EST (8:57 P.M. PST)

The alchemist's fire blew the lab's warded steel doors off their hinges with a roar, sending the blue-uniformed guards outside flying; Bryce's imbued aetherling pushed a surge of blazing strength through his limbs as he rolled to his feet, leaving the burning wreckage of the lab behind him. He vaulted off the wall, kicked a guard in the face, then threw himself into a slide down the hallway's polished floor, cannoning under a table and taking out another guard with a kick that sent a chair flying into his face. He leapt up the stairs and knocked out a third guard with a side kick en route. The door he'd come in by was locked, but he simply jumped up to grab a pipe and swung through the glass pane above it, not even needing the aetherling to boost his strength and speed for that one—CIA agents got all the best aether-tools to help, but they were trained not to rely on them as much as possible.

Up the stairs he hurtled and staggered to a stop several landings up, falling against the wall. His shirt made a sodden sound against the pourstone; he realized the white cambric had turned red with blood. From his belt-pouch, he pulled out the rune-tablet. It seemed to burn with a tangible heat from the sheer power trapped in it, almost vibrating, feeling heavier by far than the alchemical corundum of its cognomatrix should have made it. Frantically, he scrolled through the list of contact runes in the tablet's memory. Even at the speed of aethyric transmission, even in its compact form, this rune would take time to send; he needed to find someplace it would be safe, at least for the moment. _No, no, not him, not him_ —definitely _not her—shit, when did someone give me a rune for the Unholy One?!—no, no, no_ . . . .

A door burst open below, and a blue-uniformed guard thundered upstairs towards him, bringing up a military-grade boltcaster staff. Blasts of searing blue-white light shrieked over Bryce's head, so close he smelled the stink of scorched hair. The CIA agent threw himself up one more flight, paused one critical second, then swung back and kicked with all his aetherling's strength. The guard pitched over the railing and went plunging to the ground a dozen storeys below. Bryce winced as he heard the impact. He hadn't wanted to kill anybody, these guys were only doing their jobs and any decent Healer could patch up anything he'd done so far, but that kind of injury needed a full-blown theurgist to come back from—and he was far from sure the Church would be willing to provide that. Church theurgists, even the more flexible ones willing to help out the Council, tended to be _very_ picky about demanding patients with clear consciences, or at least repentant ones.

Shouts of warning and anger broke him out of his daze of regret. Bryce continued his flight up the stairs and within seconds was out on the roof of the building, under the night sky, leaping a gap and levering himself up as the guards swarmed after him. A couple of braver guards followed him. Bryce ran for another gap, a much larger one, and called on his aetherling again to boost him across the chasm to a safe landing. Only one guard attempted the same jump, and without an aetherling of his own his landing turned into a roll and a scream of pain as he writhed around his clearly-broken ankle.

Bryce ran for the building's far edge, leapt off, landed seven yards down, ran to the next edge and leapt down again, then one last jump to the ground outside; it took almost all the power his aetherling had left, but he pulled off a shoulder roll and came to his feet without another scratch. Hurrying across the empty parking lot, he pulled out the tablet again and hastily flipped through his contact list. _Hairy Chicken, Victor Nine, Cracker Bits, Chu_ —

 _CRACK!_ The bolt burst through the shroud of his exhausted aetherling, blowing it away in a cloud of white mist, smashing into his chest and knocking him flat on his back. The impact stunned him beyond pain; he blinked up at the black sky, his vision already blurring. _Aw, crap,_ he thought dimly. Who could have done this? He _knew_ the tactics Imperial guardsmen used, and this kind of lone-wolf ambush wasn't in their repertoire—it was more like . . . .

 _Aw_ , crap.

"Don't move," said a flat, familiar voice. Major John Casey strolled over, covering Bryce with his personal bolt wand, and scowled down at him as if he'd squashed some particularly nasty variety of cockroach. Then his eyes moved to the tablet in Bryce's left hand, and narrowed.

 _Oh no you don't._ All the strength was gone from Bryce's body. The black closed in. But he didn't need to see for this. He had just enough awareness left to move his thumb to the last contact rune, the oldest one in the list. "Too late, Casey," he husked, and pressed it.

The predefined command sequence kicked in. As the contents of the tablet's cognomatrix began to unspool across the miles, the aethyric currents powering it were shunted into a positive feedback loop through the corundum, building up and up until the crystal turned white-hot and shattered in a smoking mass. Bryce sighed out his last breath, and before Casey's squinting eyes, the tablet died, the last thing to flicker out the name beside the flashing contact rune:

 _Chuck._

ECHO PARK ESTATES, CALIFORNIA

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2007, 12:17 A.M. PST

"Cheer up, Chuck, you talked to _some_ women," said Morgan, fingers blurring on the controller tablet. On the C-Cube's glame-stage, his illusory avatar blew the head off half a dozen illusory enemy soldiers in quick succession. "You know, it's a start. And Ellie's right, you know; Jill _was_ five years ago. It's time to move on."

"Yeah, well, I'll move on from Jill when you move on from Ellie." Chuck gave Morgan a pointed look. "And at least Jill and I actually courted."

"I prefer to think of it as preserving possibilities," said Morgan airily. "I mean, sure, Awesome is an amazing guy and he shares all her interests, but you gotta get bored of perfection, right?" Then he glanced over as Chuck's desktop cogitator gave out the little chirruping trill of an incoming ae-missive. "Oh, man, blast from the past!"

"What, what is it?"

"Bryce remembered your name-day, dude."

A chill went through Chuck; he tapped the rune to freeze the glame and put his controller down. "What?" he said levelly.

"Check it out, right there." Morgan pointed at the cogitator's glamour-display; an alert bubble glowed amid the pastoral meadow Chuck used as his caesura. Then, perhaps reading Chuck's lack of expression, he added hesitantly, "Want me to dispel it?"

Chuck almost said _Yes_ , then caught himself. If he was going to move on, he had to confront the things he'd never addressed. Bryce might as well be the first one. "No," he said. "No, whatever he's got to say, I want my chance to answer it." He got up and went to his desk, Morgan following, and "tapped" the bubble, poking his finger into the glamour field. The missive unfurled into a blank white page. For a moment nothing happened. Then another line of calligraphy skritched across the page: **The terrible troll raises his sword.**

"What's that?"

Chuck shook his head, not sure if he wanted to laugh or go pull his bedclothes over his head. "It's _Zork_ ," he said. "Well, our version of it—you remember the old scribing adventure glame, back before they figured out how to construct imaging glamours using cognomatrix crystals? We wrote our own version of the glame back at Stanford on a TAS-80."

Morgan's eyes glowed. "Wow, you guys were so cool. So what are you supposed to enter in response here?"

Chuck sighed. "I don't remember. It was something in the hero's satchel you used to kill the troll, obviously, I just can't remember what it was."

"Right. Well, you know what, you're still really cool."

Chuck glanced at the time showing in the corner of the cogitator's display. "And, uh, you're going home."

"Is it that time?" Morgan looked at the glamour-image of the horologe. "Ouch, wow, yeah, it's that time. Sorry, buddy, my ambulator awaits." He went to the window, pushed it open and slipped out through it.

"Pedal safe," Chuck called after him. He glanced back at the missive. _Terrible troll, terrible troll, what did we . . . ?_ Then he frowned. He hadn't noticed it before, but there was a compacted ae-dossier bound to the missive, and a sizeable one by the numbers—enough to practically be a whole new major glame or saga. Maybe Bryce was sending him a sneak preview of _High King's Duty III_. Chuck smiled. It was still a pretty sucky form of apology, but he had to admit that it wasn't the worst possible gesture, either. And it would probably be nasty of him just to dispel it without even looking—

 _Ah, that's it!_ Chuck grinned with sudden recollection. On the runeboard, he typed: **Attack troll with nasty knife.** The words appeared on the page underneath the original line. For a moment nothing happened.

Then the page vanished. In its place there appeared a rune like nothing Chuck had ever seen before: so large it filled the stage's display field, so insanely, finely complex he couldn't imagine how long it would have taken to write manually. He had a second to marvel at it before it started _moving_ , looping and twirling in and out back on itself in a rainbow mist of endlessly cycling images— _images?_ Yes: so fast he could only barely consciously make them out, but he thought he could see the Pontifex, the Vatican, Viceroy Bush, the Capitol in Washington, a ballroom dance, armies marching, cavalry charging, a bulging bloodshot eye, the Pyramids, Stonehenge, dancers, a steaming apple pie, wardragons in flight, carousels, London, crashing airships, Moscow, high priests of a dozen faiths in regalia, tattoos, Paris, dead bodies, buildings destroyed by fireshells, Vienna, swords wands lightning Berlin fireblasts Dukes Ministers kings princes Uluru Rock swimmers ships knights girls women Mecca dead men hats trains crowns Beijingeruptingvolcanoesmurdersformulaesigilsmapsdemonsaetherlingsimpsdaggersshieldsruneguardshousesfacesnamesblooddrugshorrorgoldgryphonscrowdsplansscrollsconstructscrystalspoisonssecretsstoriesvictorieslossesmoresecretsmorestoriesmoremoremoremore _more_ . . . .

Chuck had the vague impression of his skull ballooning up, and up, and up, and wanted to scream in terror and agony, except he couldn't seem to remember how. Every nerve in his body came alive in shrieking, blazing fire. He thought he saw smoke coming from his cogitator, could smell the harsh stink of cracked crystal. And then the world tilted lazily around him and the floor came gently up to meet the back of his head.


	2. Chapter 2

CHUCK VS. THE MAGNARUNE

By Stephen Tannhauser

 **Description:** In another world where magic has become a science and technology of its own, a flunked-out journeyman sorcerer in a dead-end job with no prospects and no hope accidentally winds up the inheritor of a power that could change the fate of humanity . . . .

 **Notes:** In the original episode, the character who gives Casey his mission to track down the Intersect was played by Wendy Makkena rather than Bonita Friedericy, and identified only as the "National Intelligence Director". However, as she was never identified by name in the episode and never appeared again, I am choosing to put that down to normal pilot-episode wobbles, simplify the story and assume that Beckman was Casey's boss from the beginning. Sorry, Wendy!

 **Disclaimer:** CHUCK and all associated characters and images are owned by NBC, Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak. The dialogue and plot of this story is largely adapted from the pilot episode "Chuck vs. the Intersect" by Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak. No ownership of these elements is claimed by the author.

\- 2 -

ECHO PARK ESTATES, CASTILLO DES ANGELES, PROVINCE OF CALIFORNIA

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2007, 7:15 A.M. PST

" _Chuuuuuuucccckkk . . . ? Chuuuuuuuucccckkk . . . ?_ " Morgan's voice sounded like it was being poured through cooling treacle. Chuck blinked himself awake, feeling like he'd been rolled up, wrung out and flung back damp on the floor. Above him, Morgan's face blurred in and out, doubling up with odd images: was that the Pontifex? The Pyramids?

"Morgan?" he mumbled.

"Yeah, man, yeah, it's me." Morgan hauled Chuck to his feet, bracing him as he swayed. "What happened?"

"I was gonna ask you the same question." Chuck rubbed the back of his head, which didn't make it hurt any less than the front but gave him the illusion of doing something. He glanced at his cogitator, vaguely recollecting that he'd wanted to check something before going to bed, but the glamour-stage was empty and the power-rune on the core unit wasn't glowing. "Did you spike the punch last night?"

Morgan scoffed in outrage as he helped Chuck make his way to the shower. "Something goes wrong, you blame me. After all these years, where's the trust? —Yes I did."

7:22 A.M.

A cheap ceramic-shelled aethervox was stuck to the shower-wall so those in a hurry could check traffic or news while getting ready. Chuck thumbed it on and hurriedly turned the water to the hottest he could stand, then scrolled to his conduit of choice. A voice came over the speakers as he relaxed gratefully into the pounding, steaming jets. " _The 101 is clear at Universal City,_ " said the CJ, " _watch out for delays near Burbank Aerodrome, security's checking all vehicles_ —"

( _An airship coming in to land—a cherry pie—a towering downtown hotel—a screaming face—a rising fireball in the dark_ )

—Chuck blinked, shook his head and stared. What the—? He glanced back at the aethervox, but the CJ was only cheerfully burbling on about a fender-bender on the Santa Ana. Christ. Maybe he'd hit his head harder than he thought. The ache that the shower had begun to soothe away was back now, just as fierce. He thought about asking Ellie what to do and then decided against it; she'd only drag him to Westside Medical along with her, and he couldn't afford another day off. Harry Tang would be as like as not to dock his pay.

7:45 A.M.

"So this morning I'm playing C-Cube," Morgan chattered as they crossed the street, "and I'm like, dude, just let me get the sniper wand, I'll take care of it; the guy won't give me the sniper wand, can you believe it? I made him eat a shard orb. Course, he'll probably call a wardragon down on me next time I link in, but—"

"Morgan—Morgan? Morgan-Morgan-Morgan." Chuck held up his hands. "As much as I'd love to talk glames with you right now, I've got a really splitting headache, and I . . . ." He paused, then dug the silver, quartz-gemmed command ring out of his pocket and tossed it to Morgan. "In fact, you know what? Can you do me a favour? Do you mind driving?"

Morgan stared awestruck at the ring in his hand, then looked at Chuck. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa," he breathed. "Are you being serious? You're gonna let me drive?"

Chuck frowned at him and jabbed a thumb at the red-and-white Goonivator. "'Sa company chariot, Morgan. It's not that big a deal."

"It's not just a company chariot, hokeh? A hoopty's a hoopty, homeboy." Morgan took in the four-seater motivator with a blissful look. "I mean, this baby's sitting on silver! . . . Or—alchemioak, I guess."

"Well, do us both a favour and stay off the 5," said Chuck, going round to the passenger side—it didn't really much matter which side you drove from, all the control rested in the ring, but the safety mirrors had all been oriented towards the front left seat, like everybody on this side of the Atlantean Ocean did. It was an absurdly huge grudge between the Britannian Kingdoms and the Imperium's biggest colony nation that they still disagreed over that. "Because the cops are in a phased . . . deployment . . . ."

He trailed off, realizing that Morgan was staring at him with not much less confusion than he felt himself. Where had _that_ come from?

"Hokeh, uh, well . . . thanks for the tip, Ponch," said Morgan. He got into the 'vator, and Chuck hurriedly joined him, both doors slamming shut. Morgan rubbed his hands gleefully. "Oh, man, I'm gonna give these babies a workout! You've got your crystals all charged up, right?"

"Been sitting all night, man," Chuck confirmed, resting his elbow on the passenger-side windowsill and covering his eyes with one hand. A small motivator like this could get enough refreshment for its crystals off the ambient aether if it got six to eight hours down time, as long as nobody had cast any major free workings nearby in that time and it wasn't driven too fast or far. On the other hand . . . .

Chuck opened his mouth to caution Morgan about speed, but he was too late. Morgan donned the command ring, gestured as if snapping reins, and the 'vator's aetherlings came to life, seeming to erupt out of the vehicle's front bumper in a gush of coruscating reddish-gold light and then coalescing into a pair of massive, spectral horses. The phantom beasts reared and snorted, hooves striking illusionary sparks off the macadam-paved street, and the aethyric power lines stretching back from them to the chariot flashed and glowed.

"Morgan—Morgan-Morgan, go easy buddy, not so _faaaaaassssttt_ —" Chuck's yell was lost in the screech of the chariot's tires and the hammering roar of solidified aether striking the road as the Goonivator peeled out.

MYLORE, BURBANK, CALIFORNIA

9:32 A.M. PST

"Fellow Rune Goons," said Chuck to his white-tunicked team as they gathered at the service counter, looking each of them in the eye one by one to impress them with his seriousness: the small Hindic Lester; the balding, dissipated-looking Jeff; and the diminuitive Anna, perched on the counter with her dark Han eyes elaborately made up and her black skirt hiked disquietingly high. "Today is going to be a very bad day. We've got a new cognodaemon on our hands; they're calling this one the 'Irene Demova'—yes, yes," he said in response to Lester's lascivious snigger, "it _is_ named after the Serbian pornoglam star; lonely dude call volume will be high. This is a nasty one, kids. It's a matrix killer."

Chuck hoisted a laptop cogitator up to the countertop; he'd put this one aside for his demonstration, as it was an extremely old model that nobody was going to sell at this point, and had carefully broken the internal output runes to make sure nothing could get broadcast out once it connected to the Aethernet. "Last night, the showcase version of our Prism Express laptop was fried when _someone_ , excuse me," he glared over his shoulder at Morgan, standing by the wall of home optistages, who scuffed his feet and looked sheepish, "decided to visit Demoiselle Demova's ae-Realm. Anna, close the eyes? _This_ is what happens." His fingers flew on the laptop's runeboard.

Atop the laptop's display stage, a glamour materialized of a lovely young woman in a scanty outfit, writhing sexily around and sucking on strawberries as she pouted with full red lips at the viewers. Input boxes framed her image, showing where the viewer could enter ae-banking ID runes. " _Food is sexy?_ " the girl cooed in a heavy accent. " _Am I sexy? Am I . . . seeeexxx-aaayyy . . . ._ " The voice ratcheted downwards into a basso slur; the image of the woman froze, flickered, flashed, then _melted_ in a most disturbing fashion before blinking out entirely. With audible cracks and pops, the crystals inside the laptop burst; smoke drifted out through the cooling vents. Anna raised her eyebrows and made an impressed moue with her lips.

Chuck gave Morgan a glare. Morgan shrugged defensively. "Sorry, Chuck," he said. "She drives me crazy. But that's love." Over his shoulder, he triggered the activation rune for the optistages; the Wall came alive with a local news broadcast.

Chuck sighed heavily. "Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll please just ignore dirty Uncle Morgan, I think that everything . . . will . . . be . . . ."

He trailed off. On the stages behind Morgan, an imperious white-haired man in a military uniform was marching down a corridor, surrounded by mantled officials. ". . . _to arrive in Castillo des Angeles later today,_ " said the newscrier, " _to deliver a speech before the Pacifican Security League tomorrow evening . . . ._ "

Images flashed before Chuck's eyes, wrenching, agonizing, too fast this time to see, and he blinked. " . . . normal," he finished, feeling half-drugged.

". . . _The general has drawn fire for his criticism . . . General Stanfield, the former Allied commander of NATO—_ "

"He's already here," said Chuck, without intending to. "He landed last night."

"Who's already here, Chuckles?" asked Anna, her eyebrows lifted.

". . . _trying to stop tomorrow night's speech from happening_ . . . ."

Chuck turned. The name trembled on his lips— _General Horace R. Stanfield_ —along with an array of information he had no idea how he knew, but knew he _did_ know, with the same certainty with which he knew how to restore a mis-scribed or burnt-out rune: namedate, rank, career history, covert operations he'd led ( _what?!_ ), and a classified ae-missive that confirmed Stanfield would be landing at the Burbank aerodrome hours ahead of his public schedule, on a stealthed airship—wait. The cops on the 5 this morning, the security checks at the aerodrome: that was about Stanfield, of course it was! He knew it! Except . . . .

. . . he still had no idea _how._ He wasn't a transcognitive. He'd never even heard of a transcog talent which worked like this, or any scrying-spell that could pull this much knowledge out of the aether at once in such a completely organized way—nor had he cast any such spell today, whether by runic inscription or somatic concentration ritual. What was _happening_ to him?

"I don't . . . know," he finally said.

WASHINGTON E.S.C.—DIRECTORATE OF VICEREGAL INTELLIGENCE

11:57 P.M. EST (8:57 P.M. PST)

Casey watched as Langston Graham paged through the hardcopy images of Bryce Larkin. The alchemically treated paper was expensive to produce, but guaranteed that the images couldn't be scried remotely or re-imaged via glamour—in an age when matrix memory wards lasted only so long as the next generation of rogue cleavers hadn't broken them yet, many a security and intelligence agency had taken to keeping vital records on aetherstat paper only, as a guarantee of secrecy that only physical, personal theft—or betrayal—could overcome. These images had clearly been copied from a closed-cycle security imager in CIA headquarters; Bryce was walking down a tiled hall in the fine woolen mantle, cambric tunic, silk cravat, cotton breeches and leather shoes of business attire, a far cry from the ragged, wounded man Casey had seen bleeding out at his feet.

"Bryce Larkin was one of the Council's agents, Graham. One of _your_ agents," said Brigadier General Diane Beckman. The red-haired woman wore a blue Aeroforce full-cloak and was half the size of the towering, black-skinned man glaring at her, but met his gaze with equal presence.

"And it was VSA's job to find him—and to _question_ him, not to kill him," Graham shot back. "Thanks to Rambo here," he jerked his head at Casey, "we've got nothing."

"No, you got a dead CIA agent," Casey growled. "It's a gold star in my book."

"If this gets out . . . ." muttered Beckman.

"It won't," said Casey flatly.

"Nobody asked you!" Graham snapped.

"Actually, they did," said Beckman. "Major Casey is heading up this investigation." Casey saw the sour twinge of Graham's reaction, and smirked at the other man. God, he hated CIA wraiths. Sure, he killed people too, but at least he used his own name when he did it, and he never spent days or weeks worming his way into his targets' lives first only to betray them.

He looked around at the shadowed, charred wreckage of the elaboratory. Larkin had sure done a number on this place. Which, come to think of it, _was_ a bit strange; Casey despised the Council for Imperial Acuity, but they did pride themselves on leaving as little trace of their work as possible. This kind of devastation was not their style. Whatever Larkin's reason for wiping this place off the map it must have been pretty damn good. "So, what was Bryce after, hmm?" he asked. "What did this super-cogitator do?"

"What did it do?" repeated Beckman. "Well, it did . . . ." She sighed. "Everything."

Casey frowned. The general took a deep breath. "You know that after 9-11 the VSA and the CIA were told to play nice, share their intel? But the problem is that we still had to maintain clearance levels and source confidentiality. Well, this was the solution our A.T. boffins finally came up with." She gestured at the burnt-out, blackened shell of the mainframe, in the centre of the lab. "A single cogitator, with one of the largest matrix crystals ever cultivated, with carefully controlled security access for its users but total internal coordination."

"Every scrap of lore both agencies had went into this matrix," said Graham. "The cogitator mined for patterns in the chatter. Saw things no human analyst could; found things where no single person could be cleared to search."

"And all of it was encoded in glamour-images, using the same memory-association techniques that eidetic savants use. This matrix was damn near as complex as the brain itself." Beckman hesitated a moment. "Some of our crafters started muttering that they saw signs of it 'waking up'; that we might have an honest-to-God, self-aware Aethyric Intelligence on our hands, something far more than just another construct or aetherling." Graham rolled his eyes; Casey felt sour—he agreed that the idea was ridiculous but hated agreeing with the CIA on anything. "They called it the Magnarune."

Casey scowled. "And somehow all this got away from you via a single rune-tablet?"

Graham shrugged. "That was the other point of the Magnarune: its portability. The entire matrix could be recursively collapsed into a dossier any commercial tablet could carry, if we needed to get field support to an agent, or had to relocate in an emergency and destroy the primary matrix."

Casey raised an eyebrow. "Mm. Guess it was too much to expect the boffins to think about someone just up and stealing it. But hey, who'd expect a CIA agent to go rogue?"

Graham's only response to the jab was to narrow his eyes. Beckman glared at Casey, which irked him—he knew she didn't think much more of the CIA than he did. Still, he supposed she didn't have his luxury of keeping the wraiths at arm's length. "Whoever got Larkin's ae-missive got our secrets," she told the major. "Your job is to find those secrets and recover them, Casey. Whatever it takes."

Casey shrugged. "I found this on Larkin," he said, holding up the burnt-out tablet. "The matrix crystal's fried. Your rune do that?"

Graham nodded. "Part of the Magnarune's structural definition. Whenever it transfers from one physical substrate to another, it triggers a destructive feedback loop that burns out the previous matrix; it's a safeguard against duplication."

"And tracking. Again, good idea, as long as you don't _lose_ it," said Casey. "But for what it's worth, the loop didn't fry _everything._ Our guys did manage to pick up a trace signature from the transmission. Pinpointed the receiving AP address to within a few blocks."

"Where?" said Beckman.

"Castillo des Angeles," said Casey. "Which is perfect. I've been feeling a little pasty."

MYLORE, BURBANK, CALIFORNIA

2:21 P.M., PST

" _Stop_ the _presses_ , _who_ is _that?_ " Morgan murmured, in his best Jack-Nicholson-as-the-Joker voice—which wasn't particularly good, but then neither was Chuck's.

Chuck didn't bother to look up from his order folder, only keeping the teleson jammed between shoulder and ear. Morgan drooled over every halfway decent-looking girl who came into the MyLore, though unlike Lester or Jeff he could usually manage not to come off _too_ sleazily when he did. "Vicki Vale," he rapped back to Morgan, keeping up the Prince tune. God, how long was the supply depot going to keep him on hold? "Vicki Vale! A-Vic, a-Vicki Vale, vickety-vickety-vickety-Vic, a-Vicki Vale—"

A figure moved in his peripheral vision. He glanced up, then did a double-take and dropped the teleson receiver, which hit the floor with a clatter of polyhide on tile.

Across from him stood quite possibly the most beautiful girl . . . no, _woman_ . . . Chuck had ever seen, let alone met, in his life. In a half second he took in every feature: long wavy golden hair, flawlessly creamy skin, bright ice-blue eyes, a wide and full-lipped mouth, brilliant white teeth, and a tall elegant body that somehow managed to be both athletically toned _and_ mouth-wateringly voluptuous, even under the relatively plain brown leather jerkin and blue workman's breeches. And something else made all that gorgeousness even more stunning: She was actually _smiling_ at him—and not just with the impersonal reflex smile of someone in a worried rush to get some vital device fixed, or the manic grins of the girls at Ellie's party last night, but a warm, friendly expression focused directly on _him._ As if he, Stanford washout Chuck Bartowski, was the single most important person in her world. In _the_ world. _Any_ world.

"I hope I'm not interrupting," said the blonde goddess, sounding amused.

Interrup—? Oh. "No!" Chuck said hurriedly, putting his folder down. "No, not at all—that, uh, that's from _Batman_."

"Because that makes it better," said the woman drily. Yet somehow even that didn't sting—as if her raised eyebrow was an invitation to share the joke, rather than an attempt to make him the butt of it. Chuck found himself laughing, both abashed and relieved and strangely delighted. Not only supernaturally gorgeous, but with exactly the kind of dry, clever wit he liked? The kind absolutely none of the girls at Ellie's party last night had had? Something had to be wrong here. If real women like this even truly existed in the world, they didn't walk into a suburban MyLore on a Tuesday afternoon.

"Hi," said Morgan, injecting himself into the conversation, and for an instant Chuck despised his best friend. "I'm Morgan. This is, uh, this is Chuck."

"Wow," said the woman, still sounding perfectly at ease, as if meeting a Rune Goon and a floor assistant was literally the only thing she'd planned to do today. "I didn't think people still named their kids 'Chuck'. Or 'Morgan', for that matter."

"Well, my parents were sadists," said Chuck. "And carnival freaks found him in a dumpster."

"But they raised me as one of their own," said Morgan in a wistful voice.

The woman cocked her head, as if she wasn't quite sure whether to take this seriously or not. Chuck decided he'd better get things back on track. "So, uh, how can I help you . . . ?"

"Sarah," the woman helpfully filled in. "I'm here about this." She put a rune-tablet on the counter, its polyhide back plate removed, then laid a power crystal beside it. "I opened it up to change the powerstone the other day and now it won't turn on. Did I get the wrong brand, or damage the internal runes, or . . . ?"

Chuck barely restrained a gleeful grin. This was a particularly obscure issue unique to this model of tablet, one which had defeated much better crafters than himself and which would probably have kept the average Rune Goon busy for fifteen to twenty minutes checking every other possibility. Fortunately, Chuck had been told about this in one of the ae-salons he liked to frequent on the Aethernet, and knew exactly how to fix it. He couldn't have thought of a better way to look impressive if he'd tried.

"Oh, yeah, the Intellicell," he said, managing to sound incredibly casual, as if he saw this problem every day. "Yeah, absolutely. No, it's not actually a runic problem; this model has a little screw that can come loose if it's dropped, right in the back here—" He pulled his smallest screwdriver from his pocket and found the screw in question; as he expected, it had come out just a smidge, not enough to be obviously visible but enough to prevent the power crystal from seating properly. "Just give it a couple of quick turns, and . . . ." He slotted the power crystal back in, snapped the polyhide cover closed, then tapped the activation rune; the tablet's display plate came alive. "There you go, good as new. No problem."

"Wow." Sarah sounded sincerely impressed. "You geeks _are_ good."

To his acute humiliation Chuck actually found himself blushing. Sarah hadn't taken her eyes off him at all; the eye contact was almost too intense. Wait a moment. Was she _flirting_ with him? "Well, I'd say 'goons', rather than geeks," he babbled, "probably more—"

"Yeah, no big deal, it's just, well—" added Morgan.

"—the whole 'Rune Goon' work thing, obviously—"

"Excuse me! Excuse me!" Chuck had never wanted so badly to kill a customer in his life, but the panic in the voice cut through his annoyance despite himself. The man hurrying up to the counter was a middle-aged brown-haired fellow, with a little girl in tow who was wearing a pink leotard, a fluffy tutu and pointe slippers. "I have an emergency, I don't know what I did wrong, but—" He held up a handheld imager. "I shot the entire recital, but now it won't play back."

"Ho-keh, all right, well . . . ." Chuck took the imager and popped open the memory-crystal hatch. "Let's just take a look and—you don't have a crystal in here."

The man stared at Chuck, bewildered. "No, I do, of course I do! I mean it wouldn't work at all without a crystal, right?" He tapped the hatch at the imager's base, and Chuck groaned as he realized the man's mistake. God, how did people like this get through the day? With a sigh he turned the imager over and pointed at the word POWER engraved on the polyhide; from Morgan came a muttered, "Oh boy," as he too realized what had happened.

"You had a _power_ crystal," Chuck explained to the man, and showed him the empty slot. "You still need a _memory_ crystal for the glamour-images to actually be stored and played back."

The man looked positively sick. "Oh no. Oh, her mom's going to kill me."

 _And she frickin' well should,_ Chuck thought, somewhat uncharitably; he tried to cut most people slack, but there was a certain level of technical idiocy he just didn't have much patience for. Then his eyes fell on the little girl, and he softened. The man's discomfiture he could live with, but that look of disappointment—and even more so, its total lack of surprise, as if this was just another in a long line of paternal screwups—was too heart-wrenching to ignore. Unfortunately there was absolutely nothing he could do. A botched or accidentally dispelled recording he might have been able to retrieve from the memory matrix, with enough time, but it would take a professional forensic glamourist—which Chuck most certainly was not—to psychometrically reconstitute an entire performance once it was over.

On the other hand, Chuck thought abruptly, they really didn't need the _entire_ performance, did they? There might be a way to do this . . . if he was willing to risk brushing off not only the most gorgeous woman in the world but one who actually seemed to enjoy talking to him. He glanced at Sarah, who gave him her incredible smile again. Chuck hesitated. Was that smile saying _I'd really rather you pay attention to me_ , or _Go ahead, do what you need to do_ . . . ?

The ballerina sighed. Chuck bit his lip, then made up his mind. "Morgan, I need the Wall."

"It's yours," said Morgan simply.

Ten minutes later, everything was ready. The man's imager—newly purchased memory crystal now seated securely where it should be—was set up on a tripod before the Wall, and was broadcasting to all the stages simultaneously; Jeff and Lester, for once with a commendable lack of sleaziness, had outdone themselves linking everything up. Anna had taken over operating the imager, and was adjusting its focus with a sharp eye. Chuck hurried up with a copy of the music that the ballerina had told him her recital had used and slotted the crystal into a sonovox unit connected to the home-theatre setup. Amazingly, Sarah had stuck around throughout the entire process, leaning on the Rune Goon service desk and watching with what looked like great interest. A small crowd of shoppers and other staff had gathered as well in obvious curiosity; standing on the empty carpet Morgan had cleared for her, the ballerina shifted nervously as she glanced at them.

Chuck knelt down next to her. "Ready?" he murmured. The ballerina flushed and looked down at her feet. Chuck frowned. "What's wrong?"

"I'm usually in the back row," the girl confessed.

"Why?!"

"I'm too tall. I block the other ballerinas."

Well, _that_ experience Chuck could sympathize with. He'd been stuck in the back of every class glamour since his eleventh name-day. "Can I tell you a secret? But you can't tell the other girls." He beckoned her close, leaned in and murmured, " _Real_ ballerinas . . . _are_ tall."

Despite herself, the ballerina smiled. Chuck gave her a thumbs-up and retreated out of the imager's pickup, then signaled Anna and tapped the "play" rune on the sonovox. Orchestral music swelled out of the speakers; glamour-images of the ballerina appeared on every stage behind her, suddenly creating an entire crowd of fellow-dancers. The ballerina gulped, but stepped forward and, with a decisive nod, launched into her routine.

 _Hey, she isn't bad!_ Chuck grinned, watching the girl's confidence grow step by step until she was leaping, pliéing and pirouetting with as much passion as any professional trouper. At Lester's low-voiced direction, Anna was tweaking the imager's broadcast delay, keeping the girl's glamour-images just a little off-sync from her to make it look more like a real, living crowd. With a final triumphant pirouette, the girl flung her arms up and held her pose as the music finished. The audience burst into applause. Clapping delightedly along with them, Chuck glanced at Anna and got a thumbs-up of confirmation. The father would be going home with a recording of his daughter's performance after all.

He patiently endured the father's blubbery thanks, wanting nothing more now than to get back to Sarah, though the enthusiastic hug from the little girl warmed his heart enough that it was almost worth it. At last, everything had been settled, and he turned around. Had Sarah left? No! She was still there at the counter, waiting, smiling, and—

A round, bald, glaring Oriental face suddenly interposed itself in his vision. "Chuck," the man snapped.

Chuck's smile crumpled. "Hi, Harry," he said, with an effort. "Look, we'll be back up and running in five minutes . . . ."

"Five minutes?" Harry Tang repeated, as if Chuck had suggested something so ridiculous it was actually infuriating. "Do you know what five minutes means in MyLore sovereigns?"

"I didn't realize we had our own currency," said Chuck. Harry didn't smile. "Listen, I'm sorry about all the commotion, but, see, there was this ballerina, her father made a mistake—"

"We are not _stockboys_ any more, Chuck!" Harry shouted. "We are _leaders_. MyLore leaders. Or at least, we're _supposed_ to be." He stepped past Chuck, holding his gaze with a sneer. "And you wonder why Big Mike wants _me_ for assistant manager."

That hit Chuck harder than he'd expected. He blinked. "There's an open position? Big Mike didn't tell me about that . . . ."

"And why should he?" said Harry disdainfully. "He knows you won't leave the company of your fellow Goons. You should thank him, Chuck. He was trying to spare you the inevitable pain of defeat." With a snort, Harry marched off.

Chuck had to take a moment to recover himself. In itself Tang's scorn didn't bother him—well, much—but the thought that Big Mike, who Chuck had always thought had at least a modicum of respect for him, hadn't even bothered _telling_ him about the opening was surprisingly painful. Yet . . . could Chuck really blame him? He hadn't exactly been beating down any doors with his ambition and initiative, the past few years. Suddenly feeling a lot less happy about things, he turned back towards the Rune Goon counter.

The only person standing there was Morgan. Sarah was gone.

Chuck sighed. Of course she was. He hadn't really thought someone like her could be interested in _him_ , had he? There wasn't that much magic in the world, however gifted a runecrafting prodigy you might once have been . . . and why was Morgan grinning like a lunatic?

"Chuck, dude," Morgan whispered gleefully, holding up a small cream-coloured rectangle of pasteboard. "She left you her _card!_ Yes!"

Slowly, half feeling like if he shifted his weight too fast a trapdoor might open under him, Chuck smiled.

ECHO PARK, CALIFORNIA

11:43 P.M., PST

Unfortunately, the card turned out to be the high point of that day.

As Chuck had anticipated, the majority of the clients had been people incensed about their cogitators getting fried by the Demova daemon. What he _hadn't_ anticipated was that so many of those clients wouldn't themselves be the lonely dudes he'd predicted, but the wives, _bonamours_ and parents of those dudes, who'd had no idea what kinds of ae-Realms their loved ones (some of those latter being alarmingly young) were touring with the family cogitator. Unsurprisingly, most of them were utterly infuriated, not just at finding out about it like this, but at being told that if they hadn't been careful to make and regularly update a full backup crystal (which, of course, far too many of them had never bothered to), only a little of the matrix's original content was likely to be retrievable, and only after a lot of time and sovereigns. And of those angry customers, dishearteningly few ever said anything like, _I'm sorry, I know this isn't_ your _fault._ Big Mike had wound up keeping the store open an extra hour simply to handle the rush. By the time Mike had finally shooed away the last client and locked the doors, Chuck was feeling like a damp dishrag, and rather bleak about his own supposed competence. Being a Rune Goon wasn't a demanding job, and the feeling of having failed even at that wasn't a fun one.

He made the mistake of letting his gloominess answer for him, when Morgan pressed him about the card. "Why wouldn't I call her?" Chuck grumbled. "Oh, I don't know—did you _see_ her?" She had probably had several date requests before she'd even made her way home, he thought glumly. Whatever crazy whim of momentary idleness might, _very_ briefly, have made her think Chuck could be more than just a friendly helpful Rune Goon, there was no chance she would still be available and interested by now.

"Yes!" said Morgan, as they rounded the courtyard fountain and headed for the door of Chuck's apartment. "Oh, man, yes! That's why I'm going to repeat the question: Why? Wouldn't? You? Call this? Girl?"

"Because I live on the prime material plane, Morgan!" Chuck snapped. "And why are you following me home, anyway?"

"Oh, come on—we're buddies!" Morgan looked offended. "We're going to do . . . friend things, and, and . . . ." A sheepish expression came over his face. "And I need to use your cogitator, 'cause mine's still acting up on me."

Chuck snickered. "Irene Demova," he said, not making it a question.

"Ah," said Morgan wistfully. "So beautiful, and so deadly."

"Yeah," they said together, in the universal rueful commiseration of dude for dude over women, even glamoured ones. Chuck felt slightly better despite himself, listening with half an ear to Morgan's chatter as he dug out his key and unlocked the door. Maybe he _would_ call Sarah; all she could say was "no," and he'd certainly heard _that_ before and more rudely. Not tonight, though. Tomorrow.

"You know, you got to understand," rambled Morgan as Chuck swung the door open, hit the light rune with a muttered command and they stepped into the vestibule, "this is what I've been telling people for I don't know how long—"

They froze. The door swung closed behind them. Standing in the hallway, the black-clad, masked and hooded figure holding Chuck's cogitator stared back.

Chuck boggled. Was this an actual _ninja?_ It couldn't be, the Nihonjin government had formally outlawed and destroyed the order over a century ago, but there had always been rumours—He came to his senses with a jolt. "Please," he managed. "Not the cogitator."

Carefully, for all the world as if responding to his fear, the black figure put the cogitator down on the floor. Then, with a muttered, "Hai!" it took up a martial arts pose and waited. Chuck's mouth hung open. Was this guy actually expecting them to _attack_ him? _Nuh-uh, no way, Momma Bartowski didn't raise no fools_ —well, technically it had been Ellie who'd done most of that raising but the principle still applied—

Morgan grabbed a plate off a nearby bookshelf and flung it at the ninja. With a perfectly timed wrist-flick, the ninja parried it; the plate whipped back through the air and shattered on Chuck's breastbone. "Agghh!" he yelped. Not paying attention, Morgan grabbed a heavy wax candle from the same shelf and hurled that; the ninja parried the candle as well and this time managed to send it right into Chuck's groin. Chuck made a strangled sound and doubled over, then froze again as Morgan, who had grabbed a small blue vase and tried to wave it as a weapon, wound up smashing the ceramic over Chuck's head. The world blurred in and out.

"Come on, Chuck, _do_ something!" Morgan shouted.

Chuck spared a second to send the fiercest glare he could at his friend, but the other man was too focused on the ninja to see it. As the agony in his head and his abused crotch ebbed, Chuck managed to lurch towards the ninja. "Look," he stammered, "just, just please— _whoa!_ "

The ninja tossed his own cogitator at him. Reflexively, Chuck caught it. The ninja's foot scythed out in a spinning back kick, knocking Chuck's feet out from under him; Chuck flung the computer into the air as his whole body spun sideways, but before he could begin falling the ninja completed the whipcrack-fast turn and slammed his boot roundhouse style straight into Chuck's chest, sending him flying backwards to crash into the wall and then down upon the wooden bookcase, which collapsed underneath him. As if the whole move had been choreographed for weeks, the ninja caught Chuck's cogitator before it could hit the floor, twirled about with an almost feminine grace and placed it neatly on a shoulder-high shelf on the wall behind him. Then he spun back and took up the martial arts pose again.

"That's my _friend!_ " howled Morgan, with a fury Chuck hadn't heard since their schoolyard days fighting bullies. He looked around, grabbed one of Awesome's golf clubs from his bag by the door, and lunged at the ninja with a wavering yell. For half a second Chuck felt a flicker of hope. Ninja or not, you couldn't just ignore three pounds of hardened steel coming at your head—

—or apparently you did, it transpired. The ninja yanked the golf club effortlessly out of Morgan's hands and sent it whickering around Morgan's head in a flashing display of speed and precision. Morgan gawped, then held up his hands feebly. "Okay, look," he managed, "he's not _that_ good of a friend—"

The ninja whacked Morgan across the face with the club, sending him flailing across the room to collapse onto Chuck's prone body in a position that would have looked awfully strange to anyone coming upon them unexpectedly. But Chuck hurt too much to feel any awkwardness, and fear was finally beginning to make its way through the stunned disbelief. Oh, God, this guy could kill them effortlessly, and was probably going to do just that any second now—of all the unbelievable ways to die—

Behind the ninja, the shelf on which he'd placed the cogitator suddenly broke, sending the whole unit crashing down to the hardwood floor where it burst on impact. Metal plates spun away; fragments of blackened, scorched crystal flew everywhere. The ninja whipped around and froze, staring at it, apparently as surprised as Chuck and Morgan had been barely a minute ago. Morgan turned his head, dumbly, looking equally flummoxed.

"Morgan . . ." Chuck managed in a rattle. ". . . didn't _you_ hang that shelf?"

Without a word or sound, the ninja leapt over Chuck's and Morgan's prone bodies, disappearing out the door into the night.

11:44 P.M., PST

The black-clad figure had left the low-slung black chariot parked on the street outside the apartment complex; it was closer than one would normally leave an exit vehicle, but parking too far away and walking up would have looked suspicious in this environment, and it took only seconds to sprint to the chariot. The figure activated the chariot's command ring even as it dove into the driver's seat; the aetherlings that sprang to life were stealthed to be no more than a shimmer in the air, and were as silent as a breath of wind. With only the barest thrum of vibration and the whirr of silenced tires, the chariot sped away down the street as the invisible aetherlings pulled it along at speeds that would give most drivers heart attacks.

The figure stripped off the black hood. Golden, wavy hair spilled out. Sarah glared at the street in frustration. "Dammit," she growled.


End file.
